Since the magnitude of the threat from a new strain of coronavirus became apparent early in 2020, California, the nation and the world have endured a massive upending of daily life. More than 170 million coronavirus cases, a likely undercount, have been confirmed globally, and more than 3.7 million people have died of COVID-19 — nearly 1 in 6 of them in the United States and more than 62,000 here in California.
The virus has devastated families; the economic shock from the pandemic and the resulting stay-home orders put more than 20 million people out of work and cost more than $17 trillion in economic activity. Then there are the psychological tolls of financial insecurity, tens of millions of parents pressed into service as adjunct schoolteachers, and people enduring significant life events — marriages, births, deaths of loved ones — without the close embrace of family and friends.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.